New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College • Hacker News Board

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#81

Post by georgieporgie » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:12 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #78

icandoitbetter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a wealth redistribution mechanism like basic income.

Who is going to pay for that? The broke US government? If 1/3 of the US pop was given $25k/year, it would amount to 1/4 of our GDP. Until we have ubiquitous power sources, food replicators, cheap teleportation, solved all health problems and sturdy insta-houses, its just a pipe-dream. The social implications would be even worse. You would have about 10% of society supporting about 50% of society, which would easily c…

Not that I necessarily agree with the views of the parent post (I don't know them well enough), but I think you're looking at "now" to argue the impossibility of "then". In other words, I don't think our current society really reflects much of what society will have to become in the fairly near-term future.

We already have effectively unlimited energy in the form of the sun (we currently collect only a tiny, tiny fraction of its full output), I don't see how teleportation factors into it, food production seems likely to become almost entirely robot-driven within, say, a 50 year time-frame (by competitive influence), we're progressing by leaps and bounds in the area of human health, and population management will obviously be necessary to balance quality-of-life and resource concerns.

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#82

Post by georgieporgie » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:14 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #75

soup10 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think on similar lines, that at some point there wouldn't be enough work to do. But it's absolutely Utopian horseshit. There is ALWAYS useful work to do sometimes there's just of shortage of funds or skilled workers to do it. Look at our aging infrastructure, fix our bridges, tunnels, roads, buildings, houses, etc. Care for our old and sick, learn art and design and make the world more beautiful, engineer s…

You're actually just repeating what he said: you're talking about guaranteed income. Public works projects are very close to guaranteed work (and will never get funding in our current system). 'Care for our old and sick' is a $5/hour job. But they will get paid 4-5 times that. Again, its guaranteed income. >>learn art and design and make the world more beautiful, engineer spaceships, create amazing entertainment Lets…

Lets not pretend that every human is capable of doing any of this if they only had the time. The people who are capable will do it, the rest won't.

It seems unlikely to me with advances in genetics (and 'consumer' demand) that future generations will reflect the intelligence and talent distribution of current generations.

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#83

Post by ghurlman » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #67

jarek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the major affect the sheer number of people whose best option is now starting a mopping business?

It matters when we are discussing to what extent an entitled attitude is justified or should be dropped.

An entitled attitude is never justified, despite how much the attitude holder believes it so.

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#84

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:39 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #52

v0cab wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most kinds of business require some capital to start?

Less capital now than ever. Local service businesses like "Mop It Up" would cost almost nothing to operate. The barrier to entry is simply that the work is undesirable. This makes it valuable.

[deleted]

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#85

Post by rubashov » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

Futurebot wrote: post #31

Perhaps it needs to be made very clear, in case there are some that still are confused about why many people (who study non-technical subjects) choose to go to college (aside from many of the well-known ones like the promises of how it would lead to a 1950s style middle-class lifestyle; because their parents made them; because it's rite-of-passage; or because their friends are there), for /whatever/ major they choose…

> Everyone else will be part of a "sports, arts, and leisure" society

It can't work. Leisured aristocracies become decadent, dysfunctional, hedonists. People on reservations with free food become violent drug addicts. The human animal can't cope with a struggle-less existence.

If automation leads to a society as you've described then automation will be stopped.

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#86

Post by _delirium » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #52

v0cab wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most kinds of business require some capital to start?

Less capital now than ever. Local service businesses like "Mop It Up" would cost almost nothing to operate. The barrier to entry is simply that the work is undesirable. This makes it valuable.

I don't think your conclusion at the end is true. Most undesirable work is in fact not valuable, in the sense of being paid well or easy to get, because, at least if it's also unskilled, there is a large supply of labor relative to demand. Stuff like janitorial work does not pay well and has no shortage. Similarly with McDonald's: they typically get many more applications than open positions, and not because they're paying $20/hr.

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#87

Post by barik » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #59

barik wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You know close to 50% of new grads are unemployed right?" No, I didn't know that, but the statistic itself is largely unhelpful without a demographic breakdown. I would be curious as to the distribution itself by degree. I would additionally hypothesize that degrees that are more "geared" towards entering the workforce (Engineering) would have significantly lower unemployment numbers than degrees that are primarily…

How does the major affect the sheer number of people whose best option is now starting a mopping business?

Because I suspect that presenting the data this way masks the reality of why there are sheer number of people who can't find work. But even without major (which I was simply curious about), the data set is suspiciously aggregated.

For example, what if we were to drill down into the data and discover that in the metric "Some college or degree" that 99% of the individuals who could not find work were in the "some college" category and only 1% were in the "degree" category. That would paint an entirely different picture: having a college degree is incredibly useful, but attending college without completing the degree is not very useful in terms of being employable.

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#88

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:48 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #73

I'll just briefly hit the major points of what I think is "wrong with the system" since this is obviously a huge topic. First, public educations are a crap shoot. A high school diploma is a joke, it doesn't even guarantee basic literacy or numeracy. This is a big reason why white collar jobs have increasingly been forced to rely on other credentials. Despite vastly increasing per student spending over the years the q…

[deleted]

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#89

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 20, 2012, 9:52 PM UTC

rubashov wrote: post #85

Futurebot wrote: post #31

Perhaps it needs to be made very clear, in case there are some that still are confused about why many people (who study non-technical subjects) choose to go to college (aside from many of the well-known ones like the promises of how it would lead to a 1950s style middle-class lifestyle; because their parents made them; because it's rite-of-passage; or because their friends are there), for /whatever/ major they choose…

> Everyone else will be part of a "sports, arts, and leisure" society It can't work. Leisured aristocracies become decadent, dysfunctional, hedonists. People on reservations with free food become violent drug addicts. The human animal can't cope with a struggle-less existence. If automation leads to a society as you've described then automation will be stopped.

[deleted]

Re: New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College

#90

Post by _delirium » Sun, May 20, 2012, 10:06 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #78

icandoitbetter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a wealth redistribution mechanism like basic income.

Who is going to pay for that? The broke US government? If 1/3 of the US pop was given $25k/year, it would amount to 1/4 of our GDP. Until we have ubiquitous power sources, food replicators, cheap teleportation, solved all health problems and sturdy insta-houses, its just a pipe-dream. The social implications would be even worse. You would have about 10% of society supporting about 50% of society, which would easily c…

Milton Friedman (of all people!) had a pretty worked-out proposal for it, though he was going more for a poverty-line basic income. Basically, everyone (rich and poor) would get a refundable tax credit roughly equal to the poverty line (something like $11k), rather than having a specific cutoff or phase-out. It would implicitly phase out for richer people because a flat $11k credit just doesn't equal too much if you're making a lot of money.

At the time, at least, he argued that it could almost entirely be paid for just by rolling all our current welfare programs into it: instead of this patchwork of welfare, food stamps, section 8 housing assistance, etc., just have one refundable tax credit, thereby massively reducing both the bureaucracy and the market distortions while still providing a social safety net.